The following interested parties can apply at the .madrid launch phase:
-Brand owners who have registered their trademarks with Trademark Clearinghouse.
-Local trademarks and designations that are not registered with the Trademark Clearinghouse
-Owner of names of local companies and non-profit organizations
-Landrush: Applicants who do not belong to any of these categories.
The list should be understood as a hierarchical priority list. The holders of trademarks registered with theTrademark Clearinghouse have the first right of access for identical applications.
The relationship between better ranking and the new top-level domains was proved by a study of Searchmetrics for Berlin-domains. Websites with Berlin-Domains frequently place better than websites with .de domains and .com domains in regional searches with Google. The result of the study by Searchmetrics can be summarized as follows:
"42% of searches show that .berlin domains rank better locally ."
The study of Total Wensites in Houston shows that the results by Searchmetrics can be generalized to all new top level domains, including the Madrid-Domains, which are also like the Berlin-Domains Geo-Domains and City-Domains. It was proved that Google uses the domain endings of the New Top Level Domains as a key element for the assessment of domains. Total Websites draws as a conclusion:
"It is clear that the new top-level domains improve the ranking in search engines. "
Hans-Peter Oswald
http://www.domainregistry.de/... (English)
http://www.domainregistry.de/... (deutsch)
http://www.domainregistry.de/... (Spanish)